Voice over Internet Protocol (hereinafter “VOIP”) is the routing of conversations over the internet or through an Internet Protocol (hereinafter “IP”) based system. VOIP is increasing in popularity and use. Systems to establish conference calling through VOIP have increased as well. These systems have experienced rapid growth in both popular usage and software development.
One challenge facing VOIP conference calling systems is the routing of VoIP traffic through firewalls and address translators. Private Session Border Controllers are used, along with firewalls, to enable VoIP calls to and from a protected enterprise network. Some VOIP systems use Peer-to-Peer (hereinafter “P2P”) networks to overcome various VOIP technical issues such as throughput and access delay.
Some VOIP protocols route calls from one peer through a controller peer to other peers on the network, allowing the system to traverse Network Address Translators (hereinafter “NATs”) and firewalls. The NATs and firewalls prevent peers from communicating directly with each other. A controller (hereinafter “Intermediary”) peer receives the call and routes it to remaining peers on the network. However, currently no technique exists for a peer to place a group call directly to all the remaining peers (i.e., peer-to-peer) on the network in which all the peers are behind NAT's/Firewalls. Stated another way, all voice packets are routed through a central point, e.g., an Intermediary peer, on the P2P networks. Then, the Intermediary peer relays the voice packets to the destination peer on the P2P network.
What is needed is a method and apparatus to enable open paths through NATs and firewalls so that any one peer can receive unsolicited voice packets directly from any number of peers to enable a minimum delay group call.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.